The development of the Internet as a source of information, means of communication and commerce, is burgeoning. Electronic mail (e-mail) provides a form of communication similar to, but much faster than, the a letter. The rapidly expanding World Wide Web (WWW) component of the Internet now enables a company to advertise its services and products to potential customers anywhere in the world. And students and professionals may access online versions of government documents, such as the Constitution.
While Internet access is relatively easy to acquire and set up for a single computer or single individual, there is currently no way to concurrently share a single connection. For example, multiple people may simultaneously require access to the Internet from multiple computers, such as several employees in a single office, or multiple school age children in a family. Providing such simultaneous Internet access from multiple computers may be prohibitively expensive. Because in most instances users access the Internet using a modem to call an Internet Service Provider (ISP), multiple modems, telephone lines, and ISP accounts may be an required at significant expense.
Furthermore, many ISP's limit customers to a single dial-up connection at a time, so that multiple accounts are required to provide simultaneous access. Indeed, some ISP's presume an account has been compromised if accessed from more than one dial-up connection at the same time, and block the account for security reasons. If more than a few users require access, the logistical difficulty of coordinating the usage of multiple accounts may be overly cumbersome and error prone.
Another disadvantage of dial-up Internet access is the fact that the user's computers are inaccessible unless the dial-up link has already been established. This makes it difficult or impossible to connect to a user's computer from a remote location. For example, a business traveler who failed to anticipate that a specific computer file would be needed cannot generally retrieve the file from an office computer, unless the computer containing the file is equipped with a modem. If, as is typical, the office computer is connected to a Local Area Network (LAN) having a shared modem, the specific computer containing the file will be inaccessible.
In addition to retrieving files from a remote computer, it may also be desirable to access other devices and peripherals from a remote location. For example, the output of a laser printer is far superior to that of a facsimile machine. Therefore, it would be desirable to have the capability to print a file directly to a remote laser printer, rather than print the document and have it sent by facsimile to the remote location.
In view of the foregoing, it would be desirable to provide methods and apparatus for connecting multiple computers to the Internet through a shared connection.
It also would be desirable to provide methods and apparatus that enable multiple computers to simultaneously access the Internet using a single IP address.
It further would be desirable to provide methods and apparatus for providing remote access to peripherals and other resources.